Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Reducing urban crime and violence
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nity’, but rather to understand its diversity and to ensure
that the range of views and interests often to be found is not
obscured by this process of simplification. All of these
factors need to be carefully thought about when considering
forms of community involvement, including the role of the
public sector as initiator, rather than just playing an enabling
role.
It is clear that right across the spectrum of
community-based approaches in enhancing urban safety and
security, there is considerable scope for beneficial development.
This needs to be seen in terms of opportunities,
rather than in terms of problems, and must be approached
realistically, which means properly understanding the local
circumstances. There is no point in drawing idealistic conclusions
about what local communities are capable of achieving
and then criticizing them for failing to live up to these ideals.
However, there is every point in taking the view that
community capabilities are not static, but can be developed
through appropriate training, information, support and
opportunity. Consequently, programmes to develop community
capability need to sit alongside appropriate
contemporary programmes of community engagement. In
particular, if the part of the spectrum which is about direct
community action, rather than about information and
consultation, is to be developed, it is important that publicand
private-sector agencies and partnerships learn to trust
communities and to be willing to work with them as equal
partners.
The following points need to be made regarding
community-based interventions:
• Given the nature of crime and violence, they are by
some, not considered very appropriate issues to be
dealt with at the community level. The police, for
instance, may be reluctant to share data on crime or on
their operations with communities and the public at
large, for fear that this information may be abused.
• Communities themselves may have their own views of
crime and delinquent activities that may not be fully
compliant with the definitions and classifications
provided by the law. Indeed, in many communities, the
lines between legal, formal, informal and illegal activities
are blurred. A measure of common ground has to
be found before any meaningful engagement can take
place.
• Security may be a major issue for mobilizing a community
into action, but may not be such a sustaining force;
as the problems get solved, the community may shift
attention to other issues. It is therefore important to
build security and prevention issues into broader
communities agendas, and link them with service delivery,
management of services, and community
development in general. In this way, efforts can be
sustained and modulated over time.
• Finally, city strategies need to acknowledge the social
mechanisms and knowledge that communities already
deploy, possibly in isolation from, or even in contradiction
to, official practice to address risk factors and
vulnerabilities related to crime and violence. As they
have enormous potential to contribute to overall safety,
these mechanisms need to be described, discussed and
assessed.
Indeed, communities not only have the direct experience of
crime and violence, of which they often bear the brunt, but
they also often have the understanding of local dynamics and
risk factors, as well as of the ideas and mechanisms vital for
tackling them. That said, communities have a key role to play
in the prevention of crime, both by reducing vulnerabilities
and addressing risk factors.
■ Community safety approaches: Toronto and
Kingston
A good example of an approach described in the preceding
section is in the Crime Prevention through Social
Development strand of Toronto’s Community Safety
Strategy, summarized in Box 4.7. Here, there are several
instances of individual programmes where, in effect, a policy,
financial and administrative framework is provided for
community-based initiatives, but where the initiatives
themselves come from communities. Examples include:
• youth opportunity initiatives: Jobs for Youth, which
provides government funding for community-based
organizations to run summer employment projects
targeted at youth from priority neighbourhoods;
• the Youth Challenge Fund, which supports community
safety ideas that come from people living in Toronto’s
13 ‘at-risk’ neighbourhoods, and encourages community
organizations to apply for funding in order to implement
projects of this nature;
• grassroots/community-based youth services, which
provide support for not-for-profit community-based
agencies to implement programmes and services for
youth in ‘at-risk’ neighbourhoods.
There are also examples of programmes with some of these
characteristics in Kingston (Jamaica), where ‘top-down’
programmes of the type described in Chapter 4 were accompanied
by programmes designed to encourage local
communities to play a more active role in some parts of the
city in addressing the problems that were contributing to
high levels of crime and violence. For instance, in the
Fletchers Land community, major efforts were made to
encourage better parenting in order to tackle what was seen
as a breakdown in family values. The success of this initiative
led to its replication in other parts of the city. Similarly, the
Grants Pen community in Kingston, which once had a reputation
for its volatility, has witnessed significant progress in
reducing crime through a range of programmes, which have
included a major emphasis on the creation and use of sports
opportunities targeted at young people. In both of these
cases, important roles were played by formal programmes in
terms of the provision of facilities or opportunities; but the
local communities also played a major role in determining
how these were utilized. 14
It is, of course, possible to go beyond this and to have
a completely open-ended approach to community-based
City strategies need
to acknowledge the
social mechanisms
and knowledge that
communities already
deploy…to address
risk factors and
vulnerabilities
related to crime and
violence
Communities not
only have the direct
experience of crime
and violence, of
which they often
bear the burnt, but
they also often have
the understanding of
local dynamics and
risk factors, as well
as of the ideas and
mechanisms vital for
tackling them